Restricted access base stations are becoming more common within today's communication system environment. Such base stations restrict their access to particular mobile nodes, and do not necessarily broadcast base station identification information that may be easily obtained. For example, typical base station sites broadcast base station identification information that can be easily obtained without the need to physically decode transmissions from the base station. Each base station may additionally supply neighbor-base station information to the mobile node. Thus, a mobile node can easily obtain a list of base station sites that are within the area.
However, a restricted access base station typically does not broadcast base station identification information that can be easily obtained. Additionally, the base station may not be provided on any neighbor list. Because of this, mobile nodes wishing to access the restricted-access base station will have to do an exhaustive search of the area by physically decoding transmissions from each base station. This process is time consuming, and wastes battery resources. Therefore a need exists for a method and apparatus for locating a restricted access base station that alleviates the above problems.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. Those skilled in the art will further recognize that references to specific implementation embodiments such as “circuitry” may equally be accomplished via replacement with software instruction executions either on general purpose computing apparatus (e.g., CPU) or specialized processing apparatus (e.g., DSP). It will also be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.